Cameron instructs Ofsted to inspect madrasas

Cameron warned that schools will be shut down if they are suspected to be “illing children’s heads and hearts with hate”. The plans to inspect schools were related in his leader’s speech to the Conservative Party conference, in which he said children were spending “several hours a day” in Islamic religious schools or ‘madrasas’.

Cameron expressed his concerns that some religious institutions were helping to ‘incubate divisons’ within society. Statistics show that there are between 3,000 and 5,000 supplementary schools in England. Of these figures, between 700-2,000 are madrases and approximately 250,000 children attend the schools.

The Prime Minister assured that he did not want to inhibit the teaching of religious education. He said: “Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with children learning about their faith, whether it’s at madrasas, Sunday schools or Jewish yeshivas.

“But in some madrasas we’ve got children being taught that they shouldn’t mix with people of other religions; being beaten; swallowing conspiracy theories about Jewish people. These children should be having their minds opened; their horizons broadened, not having their heads filled with poison and their hearts filled with hate.”

All religious school will be subject to greater scrutiny and are expected to be registered with authorities. If a supplementary school provides teaching for over eight hours per week, then they must be registered with the Department for Education.

Mr Cameron said: “If an institution is teaching children intensively, then whatever its religion, we will, like any other school, make it register so it can be inspected, and be in no doubt: if you are teaching intolerance, we will shut you down.”

According to Cameron, the country had too long been ‘so frightened of causing offence’ when it came to tackling such issues. In a bid to combat the preaching of extremist ideology, Ofsted will be granted power to inspect religious institutions. Conservative party sources have assured that appropriate resources will be made available to inspectors to carry out the new requirement.

As with any school, if a religious supplementary school fails its inspection, an investigation will be launched and an improvement plan instigated. If no improvements are made, the school will be closed.

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